...In its light, human history, for the first time, becomes intelligible, and human behaviour understandable as never before. This radical transformation in human understanding - which has come to a peak in the mid 1990's - I shall call "the new evolutionary enlightenment" . I confidently predict that, because it is based on fully tested scientific knowledge, it will far outshine the enlightenment of the 18th century.
-Derek Freeman-

1.-How much chance, and how much selection, would you say has there been through evolution?

I think there is no doubt that Darwin was right about natural selection and sexual selection. The evidence has more than confirmed his insights time after time. Selection is clearly responsible for the day-to-day survival of individuals through biotic interactions such as competition and predation, and selection underlies adaptation and ecosystem structure. However, Darwin always tussled with the balance between selection and environmental influences, and we know more about this subject now. It seems likely that chance environmental crises, on all sorts of scales from local to global, have had huge effects on the shape of biodiversity as we see it today. Such unpredictable events may be local and may have negative or positive effects -such as a tsunami, the appearance of a new volcanic island, or the drying up of a lake. Larger regional and global events might include major temperature changes, continental movements, massive volcanism, and impacts of meteorites. Selection cannot prepare organisms for such events, and so luck must play a key role, and yet such events have shaped much of what we see today.

2.-Which extinctions were the great ones? Is a great extinction happening nowadays?

The big mass extinctions that everyone accepts were at the end of the Permian, 252 million years ago, when 80-95% of species died out, and the end-Cretaceous event, 65 million years ago, when 40-50% of species died out. The first was caused by massive volcanism which led to global warming, acid rain, and stagnation of the oceans, and the second was caused by a meteorite strike that poisoned the atmosphere and blacked out the sun. Other major extinctions -at the end of the Ordovician, in the Late Devonian, and in the Late Triassic (450, 375, 200 million years ago)- were longer and more complex, but did involve heightened rates of extinction. Today, as a result of human activity, we are losing many species every year, and when this is re-scaled to a proportion of species loss per thousand or million years, it certainly scales in line with the major crises of the past.

3.-What have been the great radiations and diversifications of the history of life?

Life has diversified in a step-wise manner many times. It seems that there have been certain biological “inventions”, such as the nucleus, sex, multicellularity, skeletons, ability to live on land,warm-bloodedness, flight, tree-climbing, burrowing, and others that opened new life possibilities. The timing of acquisition of these new characters or abilities (= novelties) has not been predictable, but each opened up a new zone of ecospace, and so each adaptation led to a massive increase in global biodiversity.

4.-What is the shape of the tree of life?

The tree of life suggests constant addition of forms of life. As the new groups originated and diversified – for example, eukaryotes, animals, bilaterians, vertebrates, angiosperms -the precursor groups generally continued. Where major groups have entirely disappeared, such as the dinosaurs, ammonites, or trilobites, this has represented only the loss of a particular group, not of the whole body plan. Some have argued that life reached saturation 400 million years ago or more, and that species originations and extinctions have been roughly balanced ever since. I don’t see evidence for that, but rather for continuing, but sporadic, expansion of the tree of life.

5.-What changes has evolution science undergone since Darwin?

The main change has been the discovery of genetics. Darwin worried about inheritance and how adaptations were coded and passed on from parents to offspring, while allowing for change, but not for dilution of favourable mutations. The integration of genetics with evolutionary theory in the 1930s was a major step, soon followed by the vast expansion of molecular biology -Darwin would have been delighted to see how molecular biology has confirmed, and enriched, his models of evolution. The molecules, through the 1960s insight of the molecular clock, give us an independent way to reconstruct the tree of life.

6.- Could you tell us about any great moment in your field work?

I enjoy fieldwork, whether digging up dinosaurs in North America or Africa, or studying the details of environmental change through the end-Permian mass extinction in Russia. But the results don’t necessarily leap out at you in the field -it’s only after laboratory work and numerical calculations that the evolutionary insights emerge. I’ve particularly enjoyed employing phylogenetic insights to the history of life.

7.-What are you working on now? What is your highest intellectual challenge? What is the mystery you would dream to uncover?

At present, I am working on diversifications. With colleagues, we are exploring ways to look at all aspects of major radiations in the past to try to understand how these expand biodiversity and adaptation. We’ve looked at the origin of dinosaurs, and want to look at other successful clades, such as birds and mammals, to try to tease apart the patterns of change in diversity, abundance, and disparity. Disparity is the range of adaptations, or range of body forms, seen in a group; evidence so far suggests that adaptations in a group expand rapidly and then diversity follows. We also want to dissect aspects of adaptation to try to understand which functional complexes are most important. So,in the bird example, we hope to determine whether the radiation was led by flight adaptations, skeletal strengthening and lightening, or improved senses and brain.

Sarah B. Hrdy. American anthropologist and primatologist who has made several major contributions to evolutionary psychology and sociobiology.

"Recommendation of Javier Moreno, Germanico: Senor Moreno interviewed me on line for his compilation the New Evolutionary Enlightenment.I found his questions both intelligent and penetrating. I enjoyed answering them and being caused to think in depth about serious and sometimes fundamental matters. He has considerable talent in an area in which interviewers are prone to be lamentably superficial".

John Postgate, Profesor Emérito de Microbiología.de la Universidad de Sussex.

“Javier is editor of "The new Evolutionary Enlightenment" (http://ilevolucionista.blogspot.com), which is a blog concerned with the science and philosophy of Mind. His many interviews with leading researchers in this field provide valuable insights into current thinking about Mind.”

“Javier interviewed me as Editor of La Nueva Ilustración Evolucionista in a most knowledgable yet empathic way. I was well pleased with the result and consider that his on line site speaks for itself with so many excellent, highly readable and pertinent interviews. I can thoroughly recommend him".

“Javier interviewed me for his website http://www.ilevolucionista.blogspot.com/ in 2009. He has built up an impressive collection of interviews there with almost every key thinker in evolutionary psychology. This in itself is testimony to his professionalism, dedication, and intellectual curiosity".

Dylan Evans, Lecturer in Behavioural Science, University College Cork.

“Javier Moreno, aka "Germanico," has performed an important service in making the work of scholars and writers in the field of evolutionary biology and allied fields accessible to the wider interantional public by designing and curating the website La Nueva Ilustración Evolucionista / The New Evolutionary Enlightenment. From my own experience as one of the participants and a reader of dozens of other entries, I can attest that the interviews are conducted in a penetrating fashion with the objective of extracting the most distinctive aspects of each writer's work, the translations (between English and Spanish as required) are done in a careful and lucid fashion, and the physical production is of a high aesthetic quality. In my opinion, Javier has made an original and useful contribution to world culture".

Stuart Newman, Professor, New York Medical College.

"This website is an extraordinary labour of love, with detailed and penetrating questions to many of the leading figures in evolutionary biology. It is a tribute to the quality of the questions, and their creative online presentation, that so many notable evolutionary biologists have answered, not merely quick answers, but detailed and comprehensive essays in many cases. This is an unusual and meaningful achievement".

"One of the most interesting interview sites for the sciences of human nature, available to Spanish- and English-speakers alike".

Steven Pinker. Catedrático de Psicología en Harvard.

“Javier's website, The new Evolutionary Enlightenment, is well worth a visit. You will find interviews with all the most interesting people thinking about the evolutionary basis of human behaviour (and also C & U Frith)”.

Chris Frith, Emeritus professor of neuropsychology, University College London.

"I'd like to recommend Javier "Germanico" Moreno as en amazing person, whose intellect and passion resulted in creation of one of the most professional popular-science web services. The list of the outstanding researchers from different fields of science, who took part in his project is really impressive. I'm sure he will be able to engage himself in other activities with equal passion and professionalism".